The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for the manufacture of bristle products, such as paintbrushes, brushes, brooms and the like comprising a bristle carrier and bristle bundles fixed thereto, with the plastic bristles, combined into a continuous strand, being drawn from a storage reel, delivered to the bristle carrier, fixed thereto and cut to length.
With the present extensive use of plastic bristles, increasing significance is attached to a continuous strand processing, because the starting material is extruded and consequently obtained in a continuous form. Following stretching it is wound onto reels or flat rolls. In conventional processing, the continuous material is combined from a large number of monofilaments and packed in the form of large bundles or bristle groups. In this form, the bristle groups are supplied to bristle product manufacturers. For processing purposes, the packing must be removed, the bristle group placed in the machine magazine and then broken down to smaller bundles corresponding to the desired bundle thickness. As these operations are cost intensive both for the bristle manufacturer and for the processor, it was obvious to carry out processing from the endless strand, in that the bristle manufacturer forms the material into reels, which are then supplied to the processor. With the knowledge of the advantages of this operation, numerous proposals have been made in, for example, DE-OS No. 28 47 781 and DE-OS No. 28 49 510, for setting up the bristle product manufacturing machines in such a way that the bristles can be processed as continuous material from the reel, wherein the continuous strand is drawn from the storage reel, delivered to the bristle carrier, with the free end of the continuous strand being fixed to the bristle carrier. Since, as a result of its manufacture, the continuous strand has a roughly round to flat-oval cross-section, it is only possible to produce those bristle products in which the bristle bundles are desired or can be accepted with a corresponding cross-section, which is the case with most bristle products. However, in certain cases bristle bundles with other cross-sections, e.g. a prismatic cross-section are necessary or at least desired, such as is e.g. the case with paintbrushes. There are also bristle products in which bristle bundles with a different cross-sectional shape and different cross-sectional surface would be advantageous, but such a bristle bundle use has not taken place due to the lack of rational manufacturing methods. It has already been proposed in German Utility Model Nos. 80 04 640 and 84 03 491 to provide bristle holes with a polygonal cross-section in bristle carriers and then to fix the bundles mechanically therein, but the holes have only been inadequately filled, so that dirt collects therein.